Letter - Mankind has believed in Thor, Zeus and a myriad of other gods

To the editor:

In response to a response to one of my letters; first, let me thank you for pointing out the error in Jefferson’s quote. It actually took a little bit of digging for me to find that this quotation comes from Eyler Robert Coates’ very excellent collection of Jefferson quotes on politics and government, and it is actually Coates’ introductory summary of this particular section of the site. It expresses Jefferson’s opinions as evidenced by his letters, but is not a direct quotation of Jefferson although it has been misquoted as coming from Jefferson several times, which led to my error.

While I do appreciate the fact that it would be impossible to clearly identify who anyone is, or was, in the limited space of a letter, there is little about Jefferson’s philosophy that resembles that of Christianity.

Jefferson wrote of the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, which makes sense as “Natures God” was a Deist term and Jefferson was a Deist. With his scientific bent, Jefferson sought to organize his thoughts on religion. He rejected the superstitions and mysticism of Christianity and even went so far as to edit the gospels, heresy in the opinions of many believers, removing the miracles and mysticism of Jesus (see The Jefferson Bible), leaving only what he deemed the correct moral philosophy of Jesus.

Let’s assume that, just for a moment, that every single one of the founding fathers was a devout follower of the Bible. Would that make it any truer? Mankind has believed in Thor, Zeus and a myriad of other gods in an effort to explain the world around them; none of which are any more real because of the ancient beliefs.

Dan L. Morrow

Long Prairie, MN

Tags: opinion